Archive for December, 2010

I’ve been playing quite a few XBox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) recently and there are some really awesome games on there selling for virtually nothing (e.g. 80 points). Sadly not many people hear about them because they are a little bit hidden away in the Game Marketplace and XBLA gets all the attention.

Here are the cream of the crop of the ones that I’ve played:

Epic Dungeon

I’ll start with Epic Dungeon because a) it’s brilliant, and b) I’ve always wanted to make a game like this since I started programming nearly 30 years ago. I used to make mini roguelike RPGs on my 8-bit and 16-bit computers back in the day and when I heard about this game via the Indie Games Winter Uprising, I just had to try it out. Within about 30 seconds I knew I had to buy it, especially as at 80 points it costs less than a bus fare! If you like RPGs, just go and try it immediately, you won’t be disappointed.

Soulcaster

I tried out Soulcaster on a whim, and boy, am I glad I did! It looks like a Gauntlet-style game at first but you soon realise it’s quite unique. You control a wizard (well a summoner, I guess) who must summon different souls to protect himself as he ventures through a bunch of interesting environments. It plays kind of like a mobile tower defense game in that the summoned souls are your towers and you run around placing them and using the scenery to protect yourself. It’s just really well done and was quite frantic at times. I bought it one afternoon and just played it straight through to the end. Loved every minute.

Crossfire

Crossfire is one of several excellent high quality games for only 80 points by Radiangames. I’ve bought pretty much all their games because they are so well done. They have a unique signature look and feel which really helps with the branding. Crossfire is like Space Invaders with Geometry Wars-style graphics, except it’s way better than that sounds. It also has a unique twist of being able to flip up to the top of the screen to fire down onto the aliens. Anyway, it’s a fantastic game that’s fun to play more than once for sure. Check it out, and all the other games by Radiangames, you won’t be disappointed.

Decimation X

If you looked at Decimation X and said it was Space Invaders on steroids, you’d be about right. It’s really well done, fun and addictive and you can play it with 4 players at once (I play it with my two boys). It also has great music by Imphenzia that really drives the experience along. I’m a big fan of Imphenzia’s modern trance-style tracks – go and check out the site for downloads! Also a heads up that Decimation X3 is now out, and it’s also excellent.

Arkedo Series – 03 Pixel

Pixel is a cute platformer about a cat with a unique art style. It’s a well made platformer that gets quite fiendish later on. Also worth checking by Arkedo are Jump (another great platform game, different from Pixel and with a cool art style) and Swap (a casual puzzle type game) – both are very high quality games.

Retrofit – Overload and Score Rush

Yes, I like shooters OK? Especially awesome modern ones.

Retrofit – Overload is a Galaxians-style game (like Space Invaders except after they’ve all lined up, the aliens begin diving down at you, and there are challenge stages). It’s fast-paced, looks great, and plays well. Try it out.

If you think Score Rush looks insane, you’d be right. It’s a frantic bullet curtain shooter but it’s done really well. Screenshots don’t do it justice as they look too crazy (almost put me off) but when everything is moving it makes a lot more sense. Watch a video, or better still, try the demo. Oh and it’s by the people who made Decimation X too!

My game!

Also, some exciting news, I’ve been partnering with an existing XBLIG developer to bring one of my existing IPs to the XBox! It should be out before Christmas, stay tuned. I’m stoked!

It’s been just over 5 years since this site went live and so I thought I’d have a little 6-year retrospective as to how it came about. (Note that I actually went part-time Indie about 12 months before this site was created and full-time in the summer of 2005).

Discovering Blitz

I’ve been programming games since I got a computer for my 8th birthday, which was 27 years ago. However, I didn’t start programming games full-time until I was 30 because I was making business software for most of my 20s.

However, one night in November 2004 I was browsing the Internet and I discovered http://www.blitzbasic.com. Back in my Amiga days I loved using Blitz Basic 2 because it was so easy to make a game happen compared to using assembly language, also Blitz was super fast. So when I found out that there was a PC version called BlitzPlus I downloaded it and tried it out. It was awesome and there was a really great community on the Blitz site that helped me to get to grips with it. Incidentally, the user name I signed up to the Blitz forums with was Grey Alien (I used to be an X-files fan back in day).

Iron Fist

Soon I was staying up half the night working on a Kung Fu platformer called Iron Fist (scroll down to find it). I was super passionate about the game, but after several months of staying up all night coding and then working all day making business software, I was feeling like a zombie, and I realised that something had to change…

Going Full-time Indie

I went through a period of inner turmoil knowing that my true calling was making games, but that I needed the money from the business software to support my family, mortgage, car, bills etc. Eventually I made the decision to go full time Indie (even though I had no runway) and suddenly I felt way better, like a weight had been lifted from me.

I also decided that there was no market for Iron Fist at the time (no XBLA/XBLIG/PSN/Wiiware, no Steam, no iPhone/iPad etc) and that it was going to take ages to finish on my own. Also I’d recently played Bejeweled and discovered other Casual Games. So I made the decision to stop work on Iron Fist and make Casual Games instead, and thus, unbeknownst to me, my course for the next 5 years was set!

My first commercial game

I spent the summer of 2005 making a few mini-games so that I could practice making a complete game (before that I’d never really finished anything properly) and I ended up with a basic framework that was suitable for commercial games.

Then I started work on a match-3 game which I titled Fruitola because you swapped fruits around. However, a Blitz forum member called Tim Fisher (Indiepath,) who had already published a couple of games, suggested that I make a Christmas-themed match-3 instead. So I changed all the graphics and called it Baubled, although that incarnation didn’t last long and eventually it became Xmas Bonus.

Tim published the game on a number of portals for me and that’s also when I made the first version of this site – it was pretty crappy looking and got redesigned a year later by a helpful teenager from Texas! That’s also when I got my Grey Alien Games logo made.

Better Quality Games

Xmas Bonus wasn’t a massive hit, but it did sell and so I felt encouraged enough to keep learning and carry on. Tim also published Easter Bonus in the Spring of 2006 and that’s when I was contacted by Injoy Games who wanted me to make a Wizard of Oz match-3.

I wanted to use more fancy effects for the Oz game and so I switched over to BlitzMax which was a superior cross-platform language with 3D card support. That’s when I made my first incarnation of the Grey Alien BlitzMax Game Framework of which I ended up selling over 200 copies before I sold the IP to Big Fish Games in December 2008.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had great looking art that appealed to the casual audience, professional music, and the special effects turned out well too. Then I reused the engine to make Holiday Bonus in a super intensive 6 week burst to get it launched before Christmas 2006. That game turned out to be my most profitable game in terms of hours worked, it still makes money every Christmas.

Big Fish Games and Canada

Someone at Big Fish Games spotted the Oz game and asked if I’d be interested in making a game for them. I agreed and they contracted me to make Fairway Solitaire in 2007 with their epic designer John Cutter. That game turned out to be a big hit (in terms of solitaire games), and so they contracted me to make more games. I was mid-way through Unwell Mel when Big Fish Games asked me if I wanted to move to Vancouver and make games in a new studio they were opening. Because I’d already discussed the idea of living part of the year abroad with my wife, we were open to the idea, and so we said yes.

We moved to Vancouver (my wife and I, my two boys, and our cat) in November 2008 and I finished off Unwell Mel, which launched in the Spring of 2009. Then I began work on another Casual Game which got cancelled, not because it was bad I hasten to add, but so that I could help out with a Facebook game project called My Tribe. I had to learn ActionScript 3 to help with the game, and that’s been fun. I also had to learn all about metrics and instrumenting a game, and that’s been very educational. I’ve worked with some very clever and knowledgeable people at Big Fish Games and I’ve learned a lot of new ways of thinking.

Indies in Vancouver

Whilst living in Vancouver I’ve taken advantage of the rich community of game developers here. In the summer of 2010 I started up the Vancouver Indie Game Developers Meetup group with Alex Vostrov, and have met tons of awesome people through it. There’s certainly a lot going on in Vancouver.

What next?

Currently I’m still working on My Tribe at Big Fish Games. But there’s one constant in the Universe – Change.

Stay posted and hopefully I’ll be doing a 10-year retrospective one day…